A battered Cuba braces for aftershocks as US seizures of oil tankers linked to Venezuela surge

Key Highlights

• military raid that resulted in the capture of former President Nicolás Maduro.“I’d be lying if I told you that I don’t want to leave the country,” said 16-year-old Cuban student Amanda Gómez.
• “We’re all thinking about leaving, from the youngest to the oldest.”Long before the Jan.
• 3 attack, severe blackouts were sidelining life in Cuba, where people endured long lines at gas stations and supermarkets amid the island's worst economic crisis in decades. The lack of Venezuelan oil could push Cuba over the brink, experts say.“This will take an already dire situation to new extremes,” said Michael Galant, senior research and outreach associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D. C.
• “This is what a collapsing economy looks like.”Galant said he believes that’s the goal of the Trump administration: “to cause such an indiscriminate suffering in the civilian population as to instigate some sort of uprising, regime change.”“This sort of besiegement of Cuba is very intentional.
• Will it work from their perspective?